Forgiving! Does the act serve oneself or serve the other?

Forgiving! Does the act serve oneself or serve the other?

We often talk about forgiving a person’s actions as if their future life depends on our forgiveness. For us forgiveness is I, the high and mighty, whom I have placed on a pedestal, doing a service to the other. This is a misconception because mentally it is not the person we forgive but instead we the forgiver is the one who has been suffering. We are the one who has been affected by another person’s action and we have been constantly suffering because of that. For the other person, the action is done and it is over. Only suffering he is now dealing with is our reactions ever since that incident, which we are causing for him. But the act he did is not causing him any mental distress. This is the important fact we need to understand. So forgiving is a service we do to ourselves.

So then, what is forgiving? Forgiving is purely our act of letting go of something that has been affecting our mental peace. Journey towards peace and bliss is a journey of letting go all the things that bring us suffering. Attachment is the cause of all suffering. Our attachment to things and people make us cling to everything claiming it to be ‘mine’. The thought of mine comes from Me. The thought of me originates from the internal faculty called ego/identity. When the ‘I’ is destroyed, there is no mine left. Everything that was mine disappears with the disappearance of me, just like in the event of death.

Sometimes we feel that an experience is not favorable to us, which means it has given us an unpleasant feeling and we feel upset. What this means is that the event or incident hasn’t satisfied our ego’s/identity’s need. The feeling of pleasantness happens when the event has satisfied our ego need or ‘my’ need deep within, or when it has resulted in ‘my’ expected outcome, which we call a favorable outcome. In other words it has fulfilled ‘my’ desire. All of this is connected to a faculty within us that we call ego/identity.

When someone’s action upsets us, we immediately tag him as perpetrator, because in our eyes he has done a grave mistake. The mistake is that his action has not fulfilled our need. While being upset we show anger towards this person and it is then expected for the perpetrator to seek our forgiveness.

The issue is with our perspective. People around us are here to do what they are intended to do. The environment around us will be how it is intended to be. The super power we possess is to not get affected by any of it. So our path towards peace and bliss lies in letting go of whatever is upsetting us. This letting go is what we call as forgiving. The way to do this is by going inward and contemplating why we are upset. That would lead us to realise that it was our desire for an expected outcome – an expected behaviour from the person, an expected action, expected words, each of which would fulfill our ego’s need.

Once we identify that the real culprit was our desire, we must use the full control within us to address this desire or need. Letting go or forgiving is us letting go of that need within us and has nothing to do with the other person. Once we have let gone, we are no more upset, we are at peace.

So, the path to bliss is not forgiving another person for his actions, but instead we foregoing our need or desire.